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This Website and Blog Page is a special forum for adults who have entered, or are anticipating entering, the inevitable but dreaded time in life when your parent has reached the end of their life, and the family is about to be changed forever.

This is also a place for helping professionals in the fields of medicine, psychotherapy, grief counseling, hospice or nursing care who work with terminally ill and dying patients and their families at this very difficult time.

Here you will find:

Support

Inspiration

Encouragement

Information

Guidance

Preparation

To dignify and honor a dying parent by considering inspirational suggestions to:

Be fully present

Personalize the experience

Accept the inevitability of death

Focus on “right now.”

Maintain awareness

Avoid judgment

Allow grieving

Experience the uniqueness

Include all who are present

Surrender and receive the gift of closure

Mary Ellen Connett, licensed marriage and family therapist, brings her 30+ years of clinical experience, as well as her personal family experiences, into this inspirational, moment by moment, journey through a parent’s dying, honoring the parent while strengthening the family bonds that are so crucial for recovery, healing and closure.

Mary Ellen Connett with her Dad, Bill Pukatch

Ms. Connett will offer excerpts from her book, Hydrangeas from Dad: Inspirations for Staying Present, Staying Close and Dignifying a Dying Parent through the website’s Blog Page. We invite you to follow along, comment, offer feedback and share experiences of your own that will add meaning and depth to this interactive website and to the final production of the book, which we hope will reach adults and helping professionals worldwide to inspire a growing awareness that every person is alive and stays with us until the moment of their death, and how we interact with our dying parent and with each other has a powerful impact on dignifying our parent and creating the family bonds so necessary for healing during and after the parent’s death and throughout the family re-structuring.